Hydroelasticity effects on water-structure impacts

Abstract Local and global loadings, which may cause the local damage and/or global failure and collapse of offshore structures and ships, are experimentally investigated in this study. The research question is how the elasticity of the structural section affects loading during severe environmental conditions. Two different experiments were undertaken in this study to try to answer this question: (i) vertical slamming impacts of a square flat plate, which represents a plate section of the bottom or bow of a ship structure, onto water surface with zero degree deadrise angle; (ii) wave impacts on a truncated vertical wall in water, where the wall represents a plate section of a hull. The plate and wall are constructed such that they can be either rigid or elastic by virtue of a specially designed spring system. The experiments were carried out in the University of Plymouth’s COAST Laboratory. For the cases considered here, elasticity of the impact plate and/or wall has an effect on the slamming and wave impact loads. Here the slamming impact loads (both pressure and force) were considerably reduced for the elastic plate compared to the rigid one, though only at high impact velocities. The total impact force on the elastic wall was found to reduce for the high aeration, flip-through and slightly breaking wave impacts. However, the impact pressure decreased on the elastic wall only under flip-through wave impact. Due to the elasticity of the plates, the impulse of the first positive phase of pressure and force decreases significantly for the vertical slamming impact tests. This significant effect of hydroelasticity is also found for the total force impulse on the vertical wall under wave impacts. Graphic abstract Hydroelasticity effects on water-structure impacts: a impact pressures on dropped plates; b impact forces on dropped plates; c, d, e, f wave impact pressures on the vertical walls; g wave impact forces on the vertical walls; h wave force impulses on the vertical walls: elastic wall 1 vs. rigid wall (filled markers); elastic wall 2 vs. rigid wall (empty markers)